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We’ve all been there – you’re an hour into your Saturday night event and things are starting to ramp up. You’ve spent the beginning of the party jumping from genre to genre, trying to find the perfect mood that will encourage the shyer guests to make their way from the shadowy edges of the room to the dance floor. Suddenly, you get the reaction you’re looking for and the crowd doubles in size as you throw on “I Wanna Dance with Somebody.” 80s female pop has hooked the crowd and now you have to come up with a suitable follow-up song or you risk losing all these new dancers. If you’ve organized your DJ music well, you need not worry; you quickly navigate to your 80s pop folder, scroll to 127 BPM, and seamlessly transition to your next track.
Having well-organized music can make your job as a DJ much easier. Here are a few great ways to get that library ready for action.
Organize by Mood
One easy way to organize your library is by mood. After you become familiar with your music, you know the types of emotions and vibes it can elicit. Some songs work great at the beginning of the night, while others are better saved for the last hour of the night. Some useful categories for this method might include Openers, Dinner Songs, Cocktail Hour, Headline Set, Singalongs, Chill, or Background. Some songs might fit into multiple categories or, based on the reactions at your events, change from one category to another.
Organize by Year and Genre
Another great way to sort your music is by year and genre. For example, you could have folders for each decade, such as 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, etc. Within these folders, you could list out the main genres of the music you own for each – rock, pop, country, etc. If you are a wedding DJ that gets requests for very specific genres, you could take advantage of the ability to stack your crates or folders even further and create sub crates within these genres such as classic rock, hard rock, alternative rock, and smooth rock. Using this method will allow you to easily rock a set of songs from a certain genre without missing a beat.
Organize by Event Type
One final way to organize your music is by event type. This is my preferred method which I’ve been using since I first started DJing around 10 years ago and it works really well for the mobile DJ. With this style of organization, I create master crates for each type of event that I might DJ – Weddings, Corporate, School Dances, Private Events, etc. Then, I create creates within each of these event types for the current year – 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020. This allows me to easily jump back to previous years when needed to find songs that were popular. Finally, I create crates for each specific event that I do, which may look something like this – John & Susan Jones 1-8-20. I like this method because I can move between genres and moods with ease while also being able to work out of previous crates that were successful. If I have a similar crowd to a wedding I did last summer, I can pull up that night’s playlist and work from there.
These are just a few of the many ways you can keep your music library streamline and easy to navigate. Experiment with these methods and find the one that works best for you!